Clients work directly with Josh Sterling, with specialized expertise and resources brought in as the planning requires.
Significant wealth creates complex decisions, and those decisions rarely stay in their own lane. Unified Advice exists to bring specialized expertise, strategies and resources to them — and to make sure each strategy works within the context of your entire financial picture.
Josh founded Unified Advice on a single principle: the client is the center of the plan, not a recipient of it. A Wealth Strategist with four advanced planning designations, he brings specialized expertise, strategies and resources to complex situations — pairing academic rigor with a partner’s care for every family the firm serves.
His focus spans advanced tax strategy, estate and legacy planning, business succession and exit, charitable and philanthropic design, executive benefits, and complex insurance design — each considered against the whole plan.
Spanning estate, business, insurance and longevity planning — the disciplines complex wealth decisions actually run through.
Chartered Life Underwriter — insurance and risk design.
Accredited Estate Planner — estate and wealth transfer.
Certified Exit Planning Advisor — business succession and exit.
Certified in Long-Term Care — longevity and care planning.
The specialist in protecting what you have built.
Established in 1927, the CLU is one of the oldest and most demanding credentials in financial services. It requires a series of college-level courses in insurance, estate planning, business succession and tax, three years of professional experience, a code of ethics, and ongoing education to keep it.
When protection is part of the plan, for a family, a business or an estate, it is designed with the same rigor as everything else, and built to work inside the whole plan rather than sit beside it.
The estate planner who builds the plan with your attorney and CPA, not around them.
Awarded by the National Association of Estate Planners & Councils, the AEP is reserved for professionals who already hold a recognized credential, have at least five years of active estate planning experience, complete graduate-level estate planning coursework, and are recommended by their peers. Its defining requirement is a commitment to the team approach, where the attorney, the accountant and the advisor design the plan together.
Your estate plan comes together as one plan, with the people you already trust at the table, so the legal, tax and financial pieces are designed to fit.
The planner for the day you leave your business, whether that is next year or in fifteen.
Awarded by the Exit Planning Institute, the CEPA requires at least five years of experience working with business owners, an intensive program in exit planning, and a proctored exam. The training centers on three things that have to be ready at the same time: the business (what it is worth and what would make it worth more), your personal finances (what the sale or transfer needs to provide), and you (what comes next).
Most owners get one exit. A CEPA helps you plan it years ahead, so you leave on your terms, with the business worth what it should be, and with a plan for the wealth it creates.
Planning for the years when you, or someone you love, may need care.
Awarded by the CLTC Board of Standards, the designation is earned through a rigorous course and exam on extended care: what it costs, who provides it, how it affects a spouse and children, and how to pay for it without unwinding the rest of the plan. It is maintained through continuing education. The training starts with what a care need would do to a family, and only then turns to how to fund it.
If a long stretch of care ever arrives, the money, the decisions and the burden on your family have already been thought through, so the plan you built keeps working.
Unified Advice is intentionally founder-led, but sophisticated planning rarely belongs to one discipline. Over the years, Josh has built relationships with specialists and resources across the country who can be brought into the planning when their expertise adds value.
Knowing when to bring in another expert is part of the expertise.
You get the direct involvement and accountability of a founder-led firm, with access to specialized expertise and resources well beyond one person.
A short, private conversation to understand the whole picture — and whether our expertise can help.
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